"‘In the winter dusk, at successive stations, we peer out to see the wives waiting behind steering wheels, children scuffling in back seats. Daddies descend and are met. Each set of participants knows only of its own little scene … Each welcomed father ought not to learn of the existence of dozens of others along the line, any more than a prisoner should hear of the execution of his fellows.’" Joe Moran on "Notes from Overground". This sounds great.

“Cartography used to be both an art and a science. I wanted to return to that.” This was my present to myself, as a souvenir, from SF. Looking forward to reading it properly – especially all the areas I never had a chance to visit – and can already confirm the maps are gorgeous. But really, it's about the whole package.

"If thousands and thousands of people are making games, then it's entirely unimportant if 99% of them are absolute garbage. That top 1% will still consist of plenty of games for us to play, and they'll be great." Lots of great quotations in this smart post from Bill Harris; this is just one, but I recommend the whole thing.

"…our top three franchises, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and World of Warcraft, accounted for approximately 68% of our net revenues for the year ended December 31, 2009. We expect that a limited number of popular franchises will increasingly produce a disproportionately high percentage of our revenues and profits." How depressing. Bill Harris delves into Activision's latest financial report and finds more rational behind the crazy Infinity Ward shenanigans of the past week.

'"We have a real culture of thrift," [Kotick] said. "The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." And then, to ensure there was no confusion in his message, he added that he has tried to instill "skepticism, pessimism, and fear" of the economic downturn into the corporate culture at Activision. "We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression," he said.' Bobby Kotick. What a guy. What a CEO. What a leader.

"Larva Labs proposes an intelligent home screen that creates a meaningful hierarchy out of a user’s information. Designed for an Android-based handset, our home screen is intended to appeal to Blackberry owners and people struggling with information overload." An interesting experiment; I like being able to vary the level of personalisation on the fly, but am not sure the screen is nearly dense enough for people with "information overload" – it only handles a couple of items in each category without drilling down. The Blackberry's appeal in part is due to its hyper-dense list of information.

I’m disappointed not because it’s fake, but because they felt the need to disguise it as a real piece of footage. Derek Powazek puts it nicely:

Longer answer: It’s not that it’s a commercial, it’s that it’s a hidden commercial. It’s not the art, it’s the ruse.

Why don’t marketers and advertisers understand that, sometimes, the target audience for this kind of thing will like it just as much if it’s honest about being advertising? It’s a lovely piece of footage, and it ties into the garage-band, DIY ethos well; it’s a good fit for the Guitar Hero brand. As it is, I’m disappointed because I now know this wasn’t the product of hard-working fans, wanting to promote a product they love; it was the product of a lot of time/effort from people with money to spend on time/effort.

My other disappointment comes from another thing it pretends to be: it’s not one take. The CG staff that Gamecyte highlights were responsible for compositing the LED-handdlebar rig, and might well also have been involved in stitching together multiple takes. One of the things that had value in this ad was that it was real – why else would the cyclist turn his camera to the window he drove by other than to prove this isn’t some kind of fakery?

“This was always created and put out there to engage the creativity of our gamers. It didn’t take people very long, as we expected it to, for them to unlock the first of the codes, if you like… We wanted people to first figure out that it was something in the marketing realm and then dig in and have more of the conversation that we’re having about how it was done, have people figure out where all the cutting points were, where there was potentially CGI, and engage with that. It’s not meant to be deceptive. It’s meant to be fun.”

And what about people who aren’t “your gamers”? The point of viral videos is that they become viral; they have a life outside their initial target. Will that secondary audience be as inquisitive as the gamers you describe – and, to be honest, will even all those gamers engage in the manner you describe? I’d linked the thing up before I considered it might be marketing material. I enjoyed the video, and I assumed this was a product of effort rather than trickery simply because I’m not as cynical as Activision would like; if there’s one thing the Internet has taught me, it’s that people have a lot of reserves of creativity within them. Why assume that putting out trickery is OK just because you believe that your audience assume everything is trickery?

Sorry if I misled you. It’s still a great video, but it’s an advert, not a fan-made video, and you should probably know that going into it.

"there's a new form of graffiti in town, and it's extremely pleasant. so pleasant that i can't imagine even the harshest critics of regular graffiti getting wound up. i mean, who in their right mind would come face to face with a sweater-wearing tree and do anything but smile?"

"…there are dozens of talented programmers who live outside of Seattle who can’t participate in our weekly chats. This makes me sad. So I decided to share some of our graphics as part of a brand spanking new game prototyping challenge. Free graphics + new game prototyping challenge = Happiness." Lovely idea. Wouldn't mind trying this at some point.

"There are many reasons one might want to book a commerical space flight, but fleeing Earth just to reclaim rights on a crappy thrash metal midi track you made in Guitar Hero: World Tour when you were 16 and had way too much free time is never going to be one of them." EULA fail.

"I mapped the strength of the wi-fi signal across levels 1 and 2 of the Library, the primary areas that the Library’s wi-fi is used. By taking readings across the floor of both levels, using standard wi-fi-enabled consumer equipment in order to mimic the conditions for the average user […], I was able to construct a snapshot of the wi-fi signal strength across the Library." Some lovely work by Dan Hill.

"PROBLEM: There is no way I can justify to myself spending that much money on plastic cows. Really, there is no way. WIN-WIN: I could however justify giving that same amount of money, or more, to a worthwhile charity. That would be an easy thing." Matt wants cows, in return for giving money to charity.

"On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more…" Lovely.

'"With respect to the franchises that don’t have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform, with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of, over time, becoming $100 million-plus franchises, that’s a strategy that has worked very well for us," Kotick said.' Kotick is very serious about his use of the word 'exploit'.

""The ability to offer these songs on a subscription basis may very well result in the newest subscription opportunity in our portfolio," he said." Kotick wants you to pay Activision to subscribe to UGC. Oh dear.

"As we move into a world in which we can manufacture things as cheaply as we print them, the skills that tinkerers develop– not just their ability to play with stuff, or to use particular tools, but to share their ideas and improve on the ideas of others– will be huge." Lots of good reflections from "Tinkering As A Mode Of Knowledge".